


These Things Unmake Us

by elanev91



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Muggle, Explosions, F/M, Medical Procedures, Near Death Experiences, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Suicide reference, Tragedy, War, addiction reference
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2019-02-26 14:57:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13238151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elanev91/pseuds/elanev91
Summary: It's 2003. Lily's a foreign journalist in Afghanistan covering the war. She's travelling with the 1 Royal Anglian when her convoy is attacked and the lorry she's riding in explodes.





	These Things Unmake Us

**Author's Note:**

> **A few months ago, a Tumblr anon asked me to write a story about James or Lily coming back from a long trip. I think it was supposed to be smutty and sweet. I did this instead.**
> 
> **Warnings: brief war scene, burn management/pain treatment, PTSD, suicide reference, addiction reference**
> 
> **Title from Emily Geminder's "Your Village Has Been Bombed," in her collection,** _**Dead Girls and Other Stories** _

The sound is getting louder in her ears, the ground is noticeably shaking underneath them, and even though she knows it's not the lorry, that the sounds are pressing closer and closer to them and the truck has picked up speed and the soldiers around her are now frantically shouting instructions at one another, even though she _knows_ , she can't let herself believe it because the fear clawing at her throat is making it hard for her to breathe, harder than it already is in the smoky, sandy air. There's another sound, another bomb, it's got to be, though how the _fuck_ have they got bombs, and this one is so close she feels it in her bones, like they're rattling out of their joints as the earth shakes underneath her.

Major Davis is shouting now — she can't hear him over the ringing in her ears, can't really hear anything anymore, but she can tell from the vein in his forehead, just visible under the edge of his helmet, that he's screaming louder and more forcefully than she's ever heard him shout while they were at the base back in Kabul. She's yelling, too, she hadn't realised, narrating into the recorder still glowing with life on her lap. She can't hear what she's saying, but she can feel the words forming themselves on her lips, knows herself well enough to know that she's shouting the scene into her mic, painting it in short, sharp strokes while she does her best to keep the terror out of her voice.

The ambient noise, if this tape ever makes it back home, will be enough to tell her audience just how awful it is. It's not her job to be afraid, it's her job to tell them what she's seeing, but even still, she lets herself think about James for a moment, just a moment, as the words tumble out of her mouth.

Time seems to stretch out in front of her as they're moving, each revolution of the lorry's tyres, every single inch they're moving across the desert seems like it's occupying years in her timeline. They're certainly aging her in a way that suggests that might be true. The explosions are getting louder and when she feels something warm trickling through her hair, down the side of her face underneath her helmet, it's like she's sucked out of her body, like she's watching it all take place from outside herself. She reaches up with the hand not clutching the recorder, her jaw still moving as she shouts whatever it is she's shouting, and runs her fingers through what feels like it might be liquid. When she pulls her hand away, her fingertips are red.

Then the truck explodes around her and everything goes black.

* * *

It's still strange, waking up in bed without her beside him.

She's been gone for a little over two months now, so he's kind of used to the coldness of the mattress on her side of the bed, the way the sheets don't smell like her perfume anymore — he's kind of used to it, and if anything, that makes it worse.

He misses her so desperately that sometimes he can barely breathe through the longing.

This morning isn't exceptional — he gets up in the dark, brews himself a cuppa and takes a shower while still fighting his way out of the haze of sleep. His tea is heavily steeped, too steeped she always says, when he wanders back to it, but he likes the bitterness on his tongue, likes the way the milk grinds the edge off, makes it smooth. He makes himself a bit of toast, stuffs it between his teeth as he starts a to go mug brewing on the worktop.

He has a few minutes, he checks his watch, before she calls, and he settles onto the sofa, rests his mobile on his thigh, clicks on the news, chews quietly on his toast, sips away at his tea. It's not long before his mobile lights up with her gorgeous face, mid-laugh, mud smeared on her forehead, eyes shining brightly up at him, and he nearly sloshes tea down himself in his haste to answer.

'Good morning, love.' He's smiling so broadly that he's sure she can hear it in his voice.

'Good morning!' She sounds equally smiley, and James presses his lips together to try and contain his smile.

'You manage to get up alright,' Lily asks and James laughs, can practically see the way that she would be cocking her eyebrow at him if she were sitting here on the sofa beside him.

'I'm not totally helpless,' he says, taking another long sip of tea. She laughs brightly, 'Says the man I've had to practically drag out of bed every morning since we started dating.'

James chuckles, pops another bit of toast into his mouth. 'Maybe I just like getting your hands all over me first thing in the morning.'

'Barely talking two seconds and we're already talking about me feeling you up.'

James laughs so hard that this time he does slosh a bit of tea onto himself. But he only gets it on his navy trousers, and so that's alright. Lily would have made him change, but what she doesn't know won't hurt her.

'What are you up to today? More secret things you can't tell me about?'

She sighs, and he wishes, for the millionth time already that morning, that she were there sitting beside him — he wants to run his thumb along the lines he's sure have carved themselves into her forehead, smooth them out, draw the smile back to her lips.

'We're leaving Kabul today,' she says, and she hesitates, trying to figure out what else she can tell him. 'Heading south towards Kandahar.'

James sucks in a breath. 'But — Lily, that's — '

'I know,' she says, 'I'll be alright. I swear.'

'You can't swear, Lily, you know you can't.'

'I'll do my best, though.'

He presses his fingers into his own forehead, pulls in a deep, slow breath to stop the knot forming in his throat from tying itself any tighter.

'You better,' he says, and he knows that she can hear the crack in his voice, knows that she knows just how terrified he is. 'I've got plans for you when you come home to me, Evans.'

His switch to her surname, her former surname, lets her know that he's alright. As alright as he can be with her in the middle of a warzone knowing that she doesn't give a single damn about taking risks, but alright all the same. Alright enough to go about his day and only think about her every hour or so, instead of obsessing about her and spending the day flubbing his lessons so badly that his Year Eight's make fun of him to his face instead of in the corridor after lessons like they usually do.

Little demons.

'Have you now,' she says, and _god_ he misses the look on her face when she sounds like that, when her eyes go dark and she bites the corner of her lip and she looks over every bit of him so, so slowly that he can feel his skin burning up under her gaze.

'Yeah, Evans,' he says, 'I have.'

They chat for a while longer, Lily telling him about the women she interviewed in Kabul a few days before, the column she's putting the finishing touches on and sending to her editor as soon as they get off the phone. 'It'll be in the paper on Friday,' she says, 'or it should be at any rate. Let me know what you think.'

She knows that he always thinks it's bloody brilliant, but she loves when he tells her anyway.

They hang up a few minutes later, when it's just gone seven and James should have left the house already because now he's going to get to school about eight and he has such a stupid thing about that. He likes to get to school right at half seven, even a little before, so then he has that hour in the morning before his damn kids get in so that he can do his grading and everything else. He hates having to take things home if he can avoid it, and despite the fact that he's basically dead on his feet for the first hour after he wakes up, he has always worked better in the morning.

It is, in fact, just gone eight when he gets in the door that morning, but he still has a half an hour before the students start getting in, forty five minutes before the warning bell, so he still manages to get a little bit of grading done.

The morning, as usual, is a complete whirlwind through history — the Interregnum, the American Revolution, Irish Home Rule — and he's exhausted and exhilarated in equal measure as he's strolling into the teacher's for lunch with Remus. He's recounting the lesson he tried for the first time with his Year Nine's where he used King George's songs from _Hamilton_ and got them to tell the story from the British side. It went well, so well, and he's riding that high that he gets whenever things go right and the kids get it and love him and everyone has a grand time, and he wants to text Lily, but he knows that she can't get his texts and she's probably travelling anyway, so he's just extra enthusiastic while he's telling Remus about it.

BBC Newshour is just starting on the radio in the corner when they walk into the lounge, and James lowers his voice as he and Remus settle into their usual chairs by the window on the other side of the room. He's still telling Remus about Matthews performing King George, about how she'd gotten so into it that James is pretty sure his kids'll be calling her George for at least the next few weeks or so, but now he's got one ear on the news, listening for anything that might, somehow, be about Lily. He can always count on —

'A British convoy travelling from Kabul was attacked just north of Kandahar today — '

James bursts into tears before the reporter can even finish her sentence. He didn't even notice they were there at first, but then his cheeks were wet and he's gasping for air and Remus is up and out of his chair, his hand dropped heavily, bracingly on James' shoulder before James even registers what's happening. He's saying something, something like _are you alright_ or _I'm sure it's not her_ , but James can't really hear him over the rush of terror in his chest, the one that's roaring like waves in his ears, and all he can let himself think about, because the alternative — he can't think that — all he can think about it how fucking glad he is that it's lunch and he's in the teacher's lounge and he's not collapsing in front of his students right now because they'd never respect him again and he barely has their respect at it is.

' — we can confirm that there have been a number of casualties.'

* * *

They don't tell him anything for what feels like weeks.

In reality, according to Remus (who is now responsible for reminding James what day it is and saying things like 'You need another cuppa, mate, you look exhausted'), it's only been a few days. Everything just feels longer because he's stopped sleeping and now he has no way of breaking up time.

He still gets up, still goes to work, still teaches his kids, because his older kids have exams in a few months and it doesn't matter that his life is fucking falling apart, he needs to be there for them. Babbington, the kid that James has quietly hated for the past four and a half years, had an actual panic attack in the middle of his introductory lecture on the Neolithic Revolution on Thursday, and really, how can he leave them when it's like this.

Remus says that he's only coming in because he's avoiding dealing with the reality of what's going on in his own life. James angrily reminds him that he doesn't know _what_ is going on because no one has fucking told him _anything_ and storms off.

Remus must have talked to Sirius about James' impending collapse, because when James goes into the teacher's for lunch, the lounge is completely empty and Sirius is there with a container of some new recipe he's been working on and an "I'm not in the mood for your evasive bullshit" expression on his face.

It's late Friday morning before he hears anything, when they call him out of the lesson on Indian Independence that he was giving to his Year Tens. He wasn't sure, at first, what they could want with him in the front office, but when he's halfway through the building, he starts to realise that this, maybe, is what it's going to be.

He's glad that Meadowes was able to step in and take over his class, because he thinks he's going to be out all day after this is over. He doesn't even know what's happened yet, doesn't even know that they're calling him down to talk about Lily, but it doesn't stop his brain from whipping up increasingly terrible things to taunt him with while he walks.

He focuses on the sound of his feet against the tile instead. The steady, echoing thump, thump, thump of his steps in the empty corridor.

He's nearly there when he remembers that he's got a copy of Lily's article folded up in his bag back in his classroom and he almost gets sick. He'd seen it on the front page when he picked the paper up off their mat that morning, had told himself he'd read it later. He's not sure that he'll be able to read it now.

He walks into the office, his thumb nervously spinning his wedding ring around and around on his finger, stops so suddenly that he nearly falls over when he crosses the threshold.

Two army officers, why would it be army officers she wasn't in the bloody army, though she has been with the same battalion since the war started, maybe that's why they were standing there in their service dress staring at him with expressions that he can't fathom and he just wants to grab one of them and shake them and start screaming "Where's my fucking wife" so that he can finally get some goddamn answers —

'Mr Potter?'

* * *

It can't be her in that bed.

The woman in that bed it — it isn't her. She's covered in tubes and wires and her skin is purple all over with bruises and it just — it can't be her.

It can't be her, but it is. It is.

Doctor Longbottom, Alice, had met him at the front of the ward when he'd arrived. The new Major in the 1 Royal Anglian must have informed the hospital after he'd hung up with James that morning, told them that James would be on his way now that they'd told him Lily was back in London.

The Army had told him as soon as they had a positive identification on her, they'd said on Friday, told him that she was too unstable, in the immediate aftermath of the blast, to be transported. But they had plans to move her to London, they'd said, as soon as she was a bit more stable. They could wait until she had improved significantly, but the threat of continued violence in the region, they'd said, forced them to the conclusion that she, as a civilian, would be best treated in London instead of the military hospital they'd set up in the middle of the desert.

They'd moved her that Sunday, five days after her convoy had exploded.

James had stayed at Remus and Sirius' that night.

He hadn't slept. Just watched his mobile and fiddled with the volume setting to make sure it was set loudly enough that he'd hear it when they called.

The Major had called around six that morning, had apologised for waking him, but James had waved off his apologies and asked which hospital she was in. He'd left immediately.

And now he's standing here in front of her bed.

She's asleep, at least he thinks she's just asleep, but he can't really be sure because he doesn't know what the machines behind her are for. He wants so desperately for her to open her eyes, for her to look at him and tell him that she's alright, that it's not as bad as it looks. Instead, he just follows the lines of the tubes connected to her back to their machines, tries to figure out what they're doing to her.

'I'm not sure what you know about her treatment so far,' Doctor Longbottom says quietly, and James startles before he shakes his head, clears his throat so he can speak.

'Nothing,' he says, 'I — I know she was in really bad shape, but the — if they told me more, I — I don't remember it.'

Doctor Longbottom nods like she understands, and James wants to ask how she can possibly understand if she's never seen the person she loves more than anyone else in the world lying in a hospital bed after they very nearly died, but he stands quietly beside Lily's bed, his eyes moving over her, taking in every piece of her, and lets Doctor Longbottom talk him through Lily's treatment instead.

'She sustained a number of very, very serious injuries,' Doctor Longbottom begins, and she has a look about her that James doesn't like, a "this is going to be a long and terrible list," look. 'She was rushed into emergency surgery when she was recovered from the blast site to address the severe internal bleeding in her abdomen and given a few days to stabilise before she was transported here to us. We performed an ultrasound when she arrived, and, for now, it appears that her bleeding is under control.

'They extracted a few pieces of shrapnel from her left thigh in the hospital in Afghanistan, and while it looks like she's avoided serious nerve damage, it will take some rehabilitation to get her leg back to full function. She has three broken ribs on her right side from when she landed after the explosion, and a fairly serious brain contusion that we're monitoring — she hasn't shown any signs of a brain bleed, but I want you to be aware that it could be a possibility given the seriousness of the injury. She's also ruptured the Tympanic Membrane in her right ear — that'll heal on its own, but she will have some trouble hearing on her right side for the next few weeks.

'She's got third degree burns on her hands that seem to have been caused by her actions after the explosion as opposed to the explosion itself — it appears that she went back into vehicle to attempt to recover some of the soldiers she'd been travelling with.'

Of course she had. Of _course_ she bloody had.

'It's a lot to recover from, I know. She's on a full course of antibiotics to ward off infection, she's wearing a chest brace to stabilise her rib injuries, and we're in the process of developing the best treatment course for her burns. She'll be here with us for a while,' Doctor Longbottom rests her hand on James' forearm, smiles softly, 'but she's made it through the first seventy two hours, and, honestly, that's the biggest hurdle. There's a long road ahead, but she'll recover. There'll be more to talk about, once she's a bit more stable, in terms of her mental health, but right now, we've got to get her body healed up.'

James nods, just nods because when he opens his mouth and tries to reply, his throat is too dry to say anything and he can't get the words out. Doctor Longbottom seems to understand — she just smiles one more time, pulls the curtain beside Lily's bed, and leaves him alone.

James sinks into the chair beside Lily's bed, drops his head into his hands, and sobs.

* * *

It's a few hours before she wakes.

He's already texted Sirius and Remus and Marlene and everyone else to let them know that he thinks she's going to be alright, has taken to googling all the problems that he can remember Doctor Longbottom talking about and reading himself mad about them while he waits.

He's terrified to touch her, to really touch her, because it looks like any amount of weight will break her, so he keeps his hand in front of hers on the bed, threading his fingers through the small spaces between hers. Her hand is bandaged and there isn't much room, but it's almost like touching her and he tells himself that it's enough.

When she opens her eyes, just gone one, he's taken to reading about hematomas, a thing Doctor Longbottom didn't say she has but that she _could_ have if this contusion gets out of control, and he doesn't even notice at first because he's too busy frowning at his screen.

She clears her throat and his head jolts up.

The feeling that floods through him — he can't describe it. It's a million things all at once, too many things to get a handle on — he's relieved and thrilled and grateful and so full of love for her, but it's also the ebb of the panic that had been clawing at him since Wednesday afternoon, the retreat of the black terror that had gripped him, the intensity of which he hadn't realised until it started to fall away and he's so full but also so empty that he can't do anything but gasp a sob.

He presses his forehead onto the mattress beside her hand, and fucking _weeps_. He's mumbling into the mattress, prayers and thanks to a god he doesn't believe in, thanking her for coming home to him, for opening her eyes, for being in one piece despite the tubes and wires that look like they're holding her together.

'It's alright,' she says, and her voice is thick from lack of use and it doesn't really sound like her, 'I'm alright, James, I'm alright.'

'You're not,' he sits up, wipes the flood of tears from his face as he shakes his head at her, 'You're not at all. Lily, you — '

She moves instinctively, tries to sit up, to wrap him in her arms, but hisses immediately in pain and relaxes back into the bed. 'Don't,' he says, 'I'm — don't — I'll be alright, I just need a minute, I — '

He pauses for a moment, pulls in a long, slow breath, and Lily watches him like this is the most painful thing about this moment. It's not the cracked ribs and bruised brain and stomach they sliced through a few days ago to stop her bleeding to death, it's the look in his eyes as he comes to terms with the fact that she's here in front of him and she's breathing and, with time and patience and modern medicine, she'll be alright.

'Thank _god_ you're home,' he says, and he wants so badly to touch her, to run his hands over every single inch of her and prove to himself that she's real. 'I — Lily, thank _god_.'

They don't even begin to describe what he's feeling, but they're the only words he has.

* * *

It's a long road.

The shattered, broken fragments of her bones are digging their way through her lungs, she can't touch anything without her hands feeling like she's dumped boiling water right onto her skin, her head is throbbing nearly all the time, from the fluorescent lights on her ceiling and the way the monitor behind her head keeps fucking beeping to remind her that she's alive. As if the fact that she's in total and complete agony isn't enough of a fucking reminder.

She refuses the narcotics they offer her for her pain management, tells them that her father, god love him, was a raging alcoholic and she thinks she inherited his addictive personality and she'd rather not risk it. The nurses press, just a little, because they can't bear the way she cries while they're melting the dead tissue off her hands, but Lily insists.

'I'm better off in the long run without an opiod addiction,' she says, a smile she doesn't feel tugging at her lips. 'Just get me a belt or something, we'll pretend it's 1780.'

She gets better at gritting her teeth. In general, but especially when they're debriding her burns.

She thinks she fools the nurses, but she definitely doesn't fool James.

The hospital psychiatrist pops by a few times for a visit — Lily doesn't like him for a reason she can't really explain. He recommends that she find herself a regular therapist so that she can start visits when she leaves.

She's in hospital for thirteen days, which feels like an eternity and yet not long enough. Her abdomen, though, cooperates. Her brain doesn't start to bleed. Her hands take a while, but eventually new skin starts growing back. She doesn't get an infection.

She's an ideal patient.

They get her nurses the biggest biscuit tin James can find at Waitrose when they leave.

A week later, they write them a card to tell them that she's doing alright. To thank them all, again, for the love and care and support.

She starts physical therapy and she hates every minute of it. Her trainer is nice enough, but he talks to her like she doesn't know how to walk and she fucking _knows_ how to walk, her leg just got a little busted.

Her trainer reminds her gently that it's about building back strength, not about teaching her to walk.

Lily comes home angrier every time.

They start therapy on the advice of that bloody psychiatrist — just Lily at first, but James still isn't sleeping, he's on edge every time she's out of the house, and finally Remus suggests that maybe he should talk to someone, too.

'But I wasn't the one in the fucking lorry, Remus,' he'd snapped. 'I was here in London, remember?!'

His therapist tells him that he feels guilty about that, apparently.

She's got a slew of medications they have to remember, and they leave notes all over the house so they don't forget. She's got ointment for her burns and it stings like hell and her ribs are still fucking cracked and her head sometimes pounds with such ferocity that she'd sooner rip it off her damn shoulders than continue breathing. She takes paracetamol for the pain and tells herself it works.

It's an incredibly long and painful road.

The worst part is that as her body gets better, she starts to feel like she's losing control of her mind. Like once her ribs don't ache every time she breathes and her leg doesn't randomly decide to stop carrying her weight and she can touch things with her hands without it feeling like she rubbing her raw nerves against the surface of the fucking sun, like once her body starts to work something like the way that she remembers it used to work, her brain decides that it's safe enough to fall apart.

She can't explain what's even happening, and, if anything, that makes her angrier. It doesn't make sense that she'll be in the middle of Tesco and all of a sudden she can't breathe or that she can't ride the bus anymore because it's too fucking rumbly or that sometimes, when the underground train comes into the station just right, it sounds like the way the lorry had rattled and screamed around her as it turned over in the sand and she has to grind her molars together to stop herself hyperventilating.

She feels like the bloke from _Mrs Dalloway_ — the first time she makes that connection, she laughs so hard she starts crying and James is sure she's finally cracked. She doesn't tell him why she's laughing because she doesn't want him to worry that she'll throw herself onto a fence in the end.

She doesn't think about that anymore, anyway, so there really is no sense in worrying him.

She probably has cracked, though. She definitely has.

She knows that he sometimes catches her staring off into space when her brain gets like this, that he notices the blank look she gets in her eyes when she's thousands of miles away from him. She tries not to snap at him about it, tries not to tell him to stop fucking looking at her like that, like she's a baby that needs to be coddled, because she knows he isn't really coddling her and that even if he were, it would only be because he cares.

She tries not to snap at him, but she still does.

She talks about it, grudgingly, with her therapist.

She thinks James might talk about it with his therapist, too.

* * *

And then, all of a sudden, the dreams start.

The first time it happens, it's six months after the explosion and she's starting to think that she's getting better. She can ride the Underground without nearly breaking down into tears. She and James are shagging again.

Everything is so _vivid_ in that first dream — the ringing that's so fucking loud in her ears, the way the truck is shaking around her, the blood on her fingers, the panic rising in her chest, the terror she works so hard to keep under control, to suppress, because she can't fucking lose her head, not here, not in this, but then the lorry is gone, shattered to pieces around her and it doesn't matter that it feels like her body is being torn apart, the truck is on fire and her fucking friends are inside and the metal is hot on her hands but she _has_ to get in there —

She wakes with a start, the scream she hadn't voiced then ripping through her now, and the sound of it, of her fucking voice making that sound, so raw and anguished and not her own — it almost terrifies her as much as the memory itself. That she could be this person that she doesn't even know.

James jolts awake beside her the moment she cries out, sits up in bed and instantly pulls her to him, tells her she's alright, she's safe now, asks her over and over again what happened.

But nothing had happened. It's just in her fucking head and nothing really had happened and how do you tell someone you were shouting in bed and terrifying them half to death because of something your mind made you relive, something that had happened months ago, that you'd dealt with, that you were over? She doesn't have the words to tell him that she's being ridiculous, doesn't know how to tell him that she's blowing things out of proportion, and so she says nothing, just sits there, his arms around her, her nose in his neck, and tries to feel surprised when her cheeks go hot with tears.

* * *

The first dream seems to have unlocked something in her mind, and once they start coming, they don't stop. She stops sleeping, terrified that her brain is going to take her back there. She makes up new lyrics to "All Star" and sings them to James — he's not amused.

He doesn't understand why she's making light of this, why she's acting like it's some kind of joke. It's serious and she almost died and can she please stop singing that fucking song, Lily, for fuck's sake.

He doesn't understand that she literally cannot think about this any other way. That one hour every fucking week in the therapist's office is enough, thank you, and doesn't he see her when she gets back, doesn't he see how quiet and distant and closed off she is and isn't this better? At least this way she's laughing and smiling and making light of it because she can't fucking fix it anyway so what else is she supposed to do with all of this? All of this that's just sitting her in brain and tearing her the fuck apart?

He says that making jokes about it isn't really dealing with it.

She tells him to fuck off.

The first few times she says this, he stays. They have a row about it of course, an insult-ridden, top of the voice kind of affair, but it's tame enough, that first time. The more she says it, though, and the more they fight, the meaner she gets, to the point where even she can't believe the things coming out of her mouth. She's taking every single thing she can and forcing it between them, building herself a wall to hide behind, to keep him out, and she can see it, in the sunken, hollow look to his face these days, what it's doing to him and she cares but she doesn't.

The fifth time she tells him to fuck off, he does.

He goes to Remus and Sirius' place, she thinks.

He comes home thirty seven hours later and she breaks when he says he's sorry.

She doesn't want to be like this, can't even explain why she says the things she says or acts the way she does. It's like her brain just clicks off and starts her acting completely mad, and then when it clicks back on again and she remembers what she said — when she remembers what she said, god does she fucking hate herself.

It can't go on like this, he says, and he's pleading with her, holding her hands too gently in his because he's still so tender, still so afraid of breaking her, and sometimes she wants to just grab his hands and put them roughly on her body, to tell him that she's only broken in her mind, now, that her body is _fine_ and can he please stop treating her like she's made of glass.

I know, she says, and she turns her hands around in his, winds her fingers through his and squeezes, squeezes harder than James has dared once in the eight months since she's been home, squeezes everything she feels, _really_ feels out of her skin and into his. She wants him to know that even when she's terrible, that even when she's someone else, that she's still in her mind somewhere and that, no matter what, she loves him.

* * *

They go to therapy.

Together, this time.

It's terrible and awkward and she hates it just as much as she hates her own therapy, but it's for James. It's for them. And so she tries.

He tells her that he first heard about what happened from the radio. That he hadn't known it was her, but he'd _known_ , and then spent the next two days in a blind panic. That he'd gotten up every morning and waited, mobile on his lap, for her to call, that he'd made up increasingly unbelievable excuses so that he could keep telling himself that she was alright. That he'd stopped eating and sleeping and that Remus and Sirius were terrified, but that he hadn't cared because he didn't know if she was alright and he's nothing without her.

'You're — James,' she's crying and she should be embarrassed, but she can't be when he's sitting there, crumpled in front of her like that. 'James, you're _everything_. You're everything.'

It takes her a bit longer to open up. Their therapist reminds them that that's alright, that it makes sense that she's still holding a lot of this close to her chest.

You just need time, she says. You'll get there.

She does.

They've been talking about their arguments for the past few sessions, talking about what Lily says when her brain goes mad and what she thinks she's responding to when she gets like that. Why she thinks that's the way to handle things when she knows, logically, that it's not.

They've been getting closer and closer to the heart of the issue, and Lily knows that's the therapist's aim, probably, but it still surprises her when they're in the middle of a session one week and it's upon them.

You don't have to share, the therapist says, but we're ready to listen if you're comfortable.

She isn't comfortable. Not at all. But she needs this.

And so she tells him. It's not much, that first week, but she tells him.

How she'd kept recording and sometimes she wishes she still had that tape. How she'd thought of him just before the lorry had gotten hit. How hot the metal of the truck had been against her hands and how she'd heard Wilson screaming but when she'd gotten in he was — he didn't even look like a fucking person. How she'd felt her ribs shatter in her chest when she hit the ground as the truck flipped.

James pushes his hands across to her, through the space between them, takes her hands in his and _squeezes_ , and they're both sobbing and it's not alright, but he's pressing into her skin, giving her something to hold onto, something to weigh her down and keep her from floating away, and it's not alright, but it will be. It will be.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [tumblr](http://elanev91.tumblr.com/)?


End file.
